


Beacon

by Octinary



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Families of Choice, First Time Father, Gen, Missing Scene, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood is Not Easy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27918250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Octinary/pseuds/Octinary
Summary: After finally collecting his destiny, his Child Surprise, Geralt has to decide what to do with her.  Ciri shows him the way.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 32
Kudos: 64
Collections: The Witcher Quick Fic #01





	Beacon

Geralt is wet, tired and sore when he pulls himself out of the sewers of Wyzima and into the street. Breathing the night air, comparatively sweet after the stench of the filthy water underground, he can feel the remnants of radiant heat emanating from the cobblestones and stone buildings around him despite the fact the sun has been down for hours. Damn that took longer than he expected. Fucking sewers. The sun has been down for hours and his body is doggedly reminding him that he hasn’t eaten since before it was up that morning, but there are now a dozen fewer drowners to trouble the local populace. Which, in the morning, can be turned into another week’s rent in the small room above the tanner’s on the outskirts of town that he’d managed to procure for them. The princess Cirilla, or Ciri as she prefers to be called, does not like the small room above the tanner’s. The thought causes his jaw to twinge and he takes a conscious moment to bask in the simple pleasure of being not knee deep in human waste and refuse before stealing himself for the ordeal to come: returning to his Child Surprise.

Life with Ciri has… not been easy. There had been a brief honeymoon period after he’d limped off of the merchant’s cart and into her embrace where things had been good. Ciri had been elated and relieved to see him, a wellspring of security and safety, after weeks of being on her own and on the run. Geralt had been half out of his mind with blood loss, poison and dreams of destiny. He’d promised to care for her forever and they’d left that very afternoon, heading north. From her tale, pieces he’d put together from gossip overheard on the road and a century of common sense, he knew that all of Nilfgaard, and probably a decent chunk of the Northern Kingdoms as well, were after the Lion Cub of Cintra, or more accurately, Calanthe’s heir. They had to go to ground and, while he felt it was nigh impossible to hide a witcher, under the assumption that the best place to hide a human was in the middle of a bunch of other humans, they’d made for Wyzima. The philosophers could go on about how every soul was unique and every human a specific brilliant instance of the divine bursting through into the material plane, but as far as Geralt was concerned, unless one of them was the inimitably dressed Dandelion, from fifty paces, they were all pretty much indistinguishable.

To aid in the disguise, he had, to Ciri’s giggled amusement, shaved his head and beard, as well as, to her high-pitched squealing distress, cut Ciri’s hair into a short boyish style. Shorn clean and with his medallion tucked away he was no longer the White Wolf, just some nameless grizzled witcher and she, in clothes borrowed from the merchant’s sons, was no longer the Princess Cirilla, but merely the last in a long line of anonymous boys sacrificed in payment for services rendered to the witcher schools’ sinister schemes. The trouble had started then, while solidifying their personas. Geralt had quickly learned that when Ciri was somewhat better rested and not full of fear and anxiety, she was full of questions and opinions.

“Am I going to be a witcher? Ugh! These clothes have fleas! Do I really have to wear them? I hate the tanner’s shop! It smells awful! Why do we have to stay in Wyzima? You’re always leaving me behind in this room and you never let me do anything! Where are we going next? I’m still hungry! I hate soup! Why can’t we have roast meat? I want to learn to fight too! How many monsters have you killed? I’ll never forgive you for cutting my hair, you know; it’s so ugly! Why can't I play with the children in the street? I haven't had to ask to go to play since I was eight years old! When are you coming home? You always say that!”

It was endless. It had taken less than an afternoon for an honest attempt at seriously answering all her questions to devolve into “Because I said so!” She still balks at his flashes of frustration, but eventually the litany always resumes. The worst part is, peppered in amongst her general distaste for the hermitical and base lifestyle Geralt is enforcing upon her, Ciri actually asks a few poignant questions that Geralt doesn’t know the answer to. For instance: Where are we going next?

As he, stinking of sewage and necrophage bits, trudges back to their hovel after a hard day’s work, he knows Wyzima is not a long term solution. People grow suspicious of a witcher hanging around too long, and even if they didn’t, there are only a finite number of years before Ciri will consider herself an adult and stop obeying him entirely. She is already, very reasonably really, fairly vocal about not wanting to spend her life above a tanner’s, locked away, waiting for Geralt to come home. But what is he going to do with her? It is hard enough to protect her now, as a child; how can he possibly protect the woman she is going to become? What sort of life can he possibly give her? He only knows the one profession, and it’s a rotten one. Besides, the formulae and magic required to make more witchers have been lost to time and the petty fears of the people who created them in the first place. Nevertheless the temptation of Kaer Morhen looms in his mind like lodestone, calling him home. He can’t though. Not like this. This is his destiny and his problem and his Child Surprise and he is going to figure out his responsibility alone if it kills them both. Which, he figures, it just might. But the School of the Wolf didn’t raise any quitters.

Jaw set and eyes determined, he turns onto the tanner’s street and sees a light on in their window. That is all it takes for his resolution to melt away and for doubt to trickle down under his armour like rancid sewer water. For the love of all the gods! He’d told the girl not to wait up! He’d told her to put the accursed lantern out! They were living on scraps and broth as it was! Damn her, why couldn’t she understand? And damn destiny for giving her to him anyway! Promises of forever be hanged, he should have left her with the merchant and his wife; they seemed decent folk. This is not going to work. This is never going to work. He can’t do this. He can’t handle her, can’t care for her, can’t provide a life for her, can’t even get her to put a damn light out!

He makes it the rest of the way down the street and up to their room in a haze of rage and despair, flinging the door open with a chastising word on his lips, only to find the little princess curled up in her cloak asleep on the bed. The flickering light in the window is not the oil burning lantern whose use he had forbidden her, but a single thin tallow candle. One of a set, apparently, as he can see the other five untouched on the desk. He is still in the doorway, frozen in confusion, when she stirs.

“Geralt? Is that you?” When she lifts a small hand to rub the sleep from her eyes, he can see the previously delicate skin is rubbed raw. Ciri smiles at him though. “You’re back. But what are you standing around in the doorway for?”

Most of the prepared lecture has evaporated into the dim golden air between them, so he only manages to stammer, “Cirilla. I said not to- You were supposed to- The candles?”

“Mmm,” she hums, still drowsy. “You said you might be late, but not to use the lantern. And not to leave the house. And I didn’t! The tanner let me work downstairs for the afternoon in exchange for them.”

Ciri wrinkles her nose at him as he crosses to sit on the bed beside her, and he feels certain that, were he not fresh from the hunt, she would have hugged him. “Why?” is all he can think of to ask.

She blinks at him, uncomprehending. “Because you said you were going to be late.”

As if it were that simple. As if he were a human who might stumble in the dark. As if he were a ship that might crash upon the rocks. As if he needed it. He doesn’t. Obviously. But his heart wells at the sentiment anyway. “It was a kind thought, Ciri, but you can save them for yourself. You’ve seen my eyes. They’ve been mutated-”

Despite the stench, she smacks him in the arm. “I know that, dummy. If I thought you couldn’t see, it would have made more sense to put it on the stairs, not in the window, wouldn’t it?” She narrows her eyes at him, as if suspicious that he’s poking fun at her, only pretending not to know what she obviously considers common knowledge. After a few seconds of appraisal she decides he isn’t faking it and tells him very matter of factly, “You always leave a candle in the window when someone in your family is away. The house can’t really sleep until everyone is safe home. Did they not teach you that at witcher school?”

And Geralt remembers. He remembers how every winter they light a hearth fire in the autumn that burns straight through to the spring thaw, and the feeling of returning to it and the other witchers after a long day out hunting in the frozen woods. He remembers years before the pogrom when a signal fire roared in the tower to help those working their slow and aching way up the mountain find the path back after a season of hard work. He remembers, before the changes, Vesemir leaving candles flickering in their dorm room after saying goodnight, when they were children, and the dark still felt like a danger unto itself. “Actually, Ciri, I think they did. I had just forgotten.”

Satisfied, Ciri nods and lays back down to sleep as Geralt starts to doff his armour and clean and stow his gear.

He’s been an idiot. He doesn’t have to do this alone. He never did. There’s a light on in an ancient castle nestled in the Blue Mountains miles to the north-east, and if they leave tomorrow, they should be able to beat the snow.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on tumblr ([Octinary](https://octinary.tumblr.com)) if you want to chat or ask me anything!


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